Tag Archive: cell

In a discussion on the blog post “Does Science Debunk God?” I got into a big conversation about DNA and evidences for God’s existence and the Bible’s trustworthiness. I spent so much time replying and researching good evidences that I figured I should share these thoughts in more than the comment section! So I will be posting some of what I wrote, edited slightly, for your benefit to read here. This first one is about “The Mystery of DNA: Does DNA Point to God?”

DNA is foundational for life. This double helix is within each of our cells in our body and each cell of every life form. This microscopic code (or instruction manual) is composed of chemicals arranged in specific sequences. These arrangements form the letters of a language that communicates to a cell all the information it needs to manufacture everything for life. The DNA in a single human cell contains the information equivalent of 4,000 books! How did DNA come to exist?

Three Possibilities

When we see an object, we can conclude it formed in one of three ways: by chance, by necessity, or by design.

Choice 1: By Chance

By chance means that the parts came about randomly, like leaves clustered in a ditch from the wind. Or a coin flipping. The more complex and delicate the design, the less likely it formed by chance. A computer, for example, would not be expected to form by chance, since random happenings do not generate the specific connections we see in a computer.

Choice 2: By Necessity

By necessity means that the laws in nature decree that something will take place. For example, warm waters over the Atlantic, the trade winds blowing to the US eastern sea board, the Coriolis effect, and other tropical phenomena cause a hurricane to form. Or the characteristics of atoms and the number of their electrons cause certain crystals to form. Both hurricanes and crystals have design, but this design is repetitive. The design is not simple, but it repeats in an ABCD, ABCD, ABCD manner – the same design over and over again. Such repetitive design is a characteristic effect from a relentless cause such as nature’s laws. Some scientists are trying to find a “law” in nature that created DNA, but that is quite contrary to the design of DNA.

Choice 3: By Design

DNA has an irregular design. It is one of the most fascinating objects in nature because of this non-repeating pattern. The pattern appears random at first. The arrangements of the different chemicals in DNA does not repeat ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, like the atomic structure of a crystal. Rather, the four DNA chemicals are arranged in non-repetitive patterns, like GHR TYGREF BUYI. DNA is actually much more complex, because its “random” pattern actually conforms to a “language code” that makes perfect sense of the letters in DNA. For example, once the code is known, the above sequence may mean LET TYLER PLAY.

Cutting Choices 1 & 2

Since the pattern does not repeat, the necessity of natural law is powerless to create it, because necessity produces repetition. Chance has an even more woebegone probability of producing this unrepeated pattern, since mindless chance does not know about the higher code that directs the non-repeating pattern and makes sense of this pattern. Without knowing the higher code, the only thing created would be chaos.

The Key Is Information

DNA is like a foreign language – it looks random at first, but once you understand the “code” and “rules” of the language, all the arrangement of the letters makes sense in this order. This irregular yet patterned aspect of DNA makes DNA very unique, because it is specified information. And information of this kind is only known to result from an intelligent mind.

Dr. Werner Gitt, Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, states that one thing we have learned from scientific study is that information can only result from greater information that results from a mind and will:

“No Known Natural Law”

“A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor) … It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required.”In the Beginning was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany, pp. 64–7.

“There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.” (p. 79)

Thus, chance and necessity are unable to account for the information in DNA. This leaves the third option, design. Someone’s mind had to intentionally design DNA so the pattern makes sense and can function.

The Search Begins . . .

Now, who could this higher mind be? DNA is exceedingly complex, far exceeding the complexity of any computer code or other information that mere human minds can create. Not even the most brilliant scientists can create DNA. So whatever mind created DNA, it is a mind far superior to ours.

Option 1: Aliens?

Maybe aliens gave our planet life, including DNA? Some have proposed it in all seriousness. Yet it is not the most reasonable choice, since we have very little evidence that such higher life forms exist in outer space. The most evidence for life outside earth is bacteria in Mars, but that is far from super-intelligent extraterrestrials. Besides, these hypothetical life forms would themselves have to have some information code similar to DNA within their own cells. All life, especially of the higher orders, that we have ever experienced contains DNA, so it is only reasonable to say that DNA or something like it is integral to life. If extraterrestrials created DNA on earth, who created theirs? The problem is only pushed farther back in the mists of time. So who created it?

Option 2: The Life Force

Is the Life Force of pantheistic religions like Hinduism the cause of DNA? Not likely, since this Life Force is supposed to be impersonal – which means it has no will of its own. Such a force would be similar to nature’s laws, another “necessity” unable to create anything except repetitious designs, like the law of karma. But since DNA is an unrepeated pattern of information, an impersonal life force is truly unlikely as its source.

Option 3: A Creator

From a process of elimination, we have reduced the possibilities greatly. From thinking through this process of elimination, here are some traits of DNA’s Creator:

1. This Creator must be super-intelligent, since DNA is super-complex

2. This Creator must be very powerful in order to bring elements together and make DNA from raw materials.

3. This Creator must have the ability to see things we cannot, such as the microscopic world, yet also have the wisdom to know how to make DNA work for life in the macroscopic world.

4. This Creator must have a will and not just be pure law or necessity, since DNA has a non-repeating pattern.

5. This Creator must not be composed of DNA, since that is the very thing we are trying to explain. If whoever made DNA has no DNA, then this mind and will is much different from all life as we know it. Since all flesh has DNA, this being appears not to be made of flesh.

6. This Creator cares about life, since DNA is key to life.

Who is this Creator?

Now, where can I find a super-intelligent, super-powerful, all-seeing, wise, conscious, and non-physical Creator who has a keen interest in life on this planet? Well, every single human society since antiquity already claims that such a being exists: God. Isn’t it strange that all human societies have the consciousness of a being they cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel? Yet DNA shows that this kind of being is just what is required for DNA’s very existence! This is no coincidence.

We Knew It All Along

The Creator of DNA put within our consciousness (in our DNA!) that He exists and can be known. No other cause can adequately explain how the non-repeating, incredibly complex information in DNA came into existence. Even the philosopher Antony Flew, the most renown atheist of the twentieth century, made a 180 and admitted near the end of his life that God must exist because of DNA. The discovery of DNA was one of the most pertinent reasons for this atheist’s turnaround.

Thus, DNA is powerful evidence that God exists just as these words right here are evidence that a person exists behind them. These words couldn’t write themselves, even over millions of years, because they do not mean anything in themselves, but have meaning only within the higher code, or language, they belong in. The physics that make these words possible for you to see – the ink, paper, printer – cannot make the words for the simple reason that information is not part of the physical world. The same information could be written with a pencil or even with squirts of lemon juice. Thus, the natural laws of the physical world have nothing to do with information. Physical laws can only work with the information encoded within it. But it can’t create any new information, like DNA. That requires, as Dr. Werner Gitt concludes, a mind behind the matter. And God is the only mind that qualifies as capable of creating DNA.

At the dawn of evolutionary theory, scientists considered bacteria to be quite simple. They are the most “primitive” of living organisms, after all. Bacteria were the closest, scientists said, to that first life that sprang out of the muck of prehistoric earth. But discoveries in the ensuing centuries would reveal startling complexity in the tiniest forms of life. One of these was the bacterial flagellum.

Flagella are used for locomotion, propelling many bacteria through their watery world. A flagellum is composed of a filament and an electrical motor. This true rotary motor is capable of over 1000 revolutions per second, yet it is as tiny as a virus, thus smaller than any motor man has ever invented. Its structure requires more than forty different kinds of proteins; if it is missing just one, it cannot function. Furthermore, electricity is supplied to the motor by a process on the cell’s plasma membrane.

The way that flagella operate also differs among bacteria. A bacterium may have one flagellum that can rotate in opposite directions, depending on which direction the cell wants to travel. Or a bacterium may have two flagella at opposite ends of the cell, each one used to move in a certain direction. Some cells have flagella all over them. When the bacterium wants to go somewhere, these flagella filaments form a “helical bundle” at either end of the cell and rotate uniformly.

There is just no way that flagella can be created through evolution. Would anyone believe that a man-made engine was formed from natural forces? Could you point to an electrical motor and convince someone that the wind shaped its parts with sand over millions of years? They would say that you are a fool. But a motor invisible to the unaided eye, which would be useless without a set number of parts, is said to be the product of chance, a motor whose workings still baffle biologists. They praise mechanical engineers, but scoff at the very existence of the greatest Engineer of all the universe. They should be ashamed of themselves. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Romans 1:22.

Note: Information from “The Amazing Cell” by Dr. Dudley Eirich and “Design in living organisms (motors)” by Jonathan Sarfati, all found at answersingenesis.org.